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A new approach to model the adoption of e-health

Abstract:

This paper presents a new model to understand the reasons why individuals would use new ICT (Information and Communication Technologies) to perform a change in their lifestyle (i.e. an e-health application). Achieving a lifestyle change by the use of ICT is a multifold issue that can be broadly addressed by analyzing the individual's attitude towards both their willingness to change a health behavior and to do so by the use of ICT. Our work has been to develop a model that explains the different stages the user is at both in terms of the perception of healthcare and the use of technology to perform any change. Moreover, we have designed and implemented a set of questionnaires that assist us in placing the user at a stage in each of the paths in order to understand what personalized information needs to be provided according to the stage the user is at. This model proposes a general framework and it may be applied to the conception, design and evaluation of any e-health application. It allows enhancing the user modeling process by taking into account both health behavior aspects as well as technological, which up to this moment have not been taken into account and may be part of the explanation of some e-health application under utilization. © 2006 IEEE.